"The Damned Utd" by David Peace, a fictional account of Brian Clough's disastrous spell as manager of Leeds United, has just come out in paperback. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in football. (Although the blurbs on the cover try to sell it to a non-football audience, I don't think a book that features full league tables for the old First Division on half-a-dozen pages is likely to have a very broad appeal).
Read this and you'll certainly agree with Clough's description of himself as "Old Big 'Ed". You'll get some idea of his devotion to his family and his unhealthy fear of failure and his capacity for self-deception. One thing you won't get, perhaps surprisingly, is much insight into what made him so successful at Derby County and later at Nottingham Forest. Whatever it was, he doesn't seem to have made much effort to put it into practice at Elland Road. Still, it's a rollicking good read, and a book I will definitely return to sooner rather than later.
No comments:
Post a Comment